


~ATH We Part

by Grimreaperchibi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Explicit Ending, Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Quadrant Confusion, Size Difference, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-03-13 08:00:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3373847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grimreaperchibi/pseuds/Grimreaperchibi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's amazing how one little bug in the code can screw so much up. But when it comes to Karkat and Sollux, screwing up is just another way of making things right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SybLaTortue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SybLaTortue/gifts).



> Based on [this prompt](http://syblatortue.tumblr.com/post/107713985776/i-want-to-read-the-thing), which finally got me writing again after almost 8 months of nothing. I can't thank you enough for letting me work on this lovely idea!

\--twinArmageddons [TA] started trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]--

TA: kk

\--carcinoGeneticist [CG] is busy--

TA: kk

\--carcinoGeneticist [CG] is busy--

TA: quiit polii2hiing your bulge two whatever 2hiity romcom youre watchiing now and pay attentiion.  
TA: ii promii2e iit2 a better u2e of your tiime.

\--carcinoGeneticist [CG] is busy--

TA: kk  
TA: if you dont re2pond iin the next two miinute2 ii wiill replace every 2ound fiile on your hu2ktop wiith 2ome ver2iion of the annoyiing faiiry from Troll Legend of Zelda and then lock your permii22iion2.  
TA: every 2ound kk. all of them.

\--carcinoGeneticist [CG] changed status to active--

CG: OH MY GOD, YOU MANIC SHITWEASEL. HAVING TO LISTEN TO THAT OVERUSED SOUND FILE ON REPEAT FOR THE NEXT SWEEP WOULD BE A FRACTION OF HOW ANNOYING YOU ARE RIGHT NOW. HOW DO YOU OF ALL TROLLS NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD BUSY? YOU TELL ME ALL THE TIME HOW FUCKING BUSY YOU ARE WHEN I WANT TO TALK. AND NOW THAT I'M THE ONE WHO'S BUSY, YOU'VE SUDDENLY DEVELOPED AN ACUTE CASE OF LEXICAL AMNESIA.  
CG: BUT SINCE I'M SUCH A GREAT FRIEND, I WOULD BE GLAD TO HELP YOU IN YOUR TIME OF NEED BY PROVIDING A SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM THAT'S SIMPLE ENOUGH EVEN YOUR MALNOURISHED AND SLEEP DEPRIVED PAN CAN COMPREHEND IT.  
CG: FUCK OFF.

\--carcinoGeneticist [CG] change status to busy--

TA: cryiing iintwo your keyboard doe2nt count a2 beiing bu2y and you know iit.

Karkat grit his teeth, forcing the frustrated noise rising from his throat to come out as a snort of derision rather than a sigh of surrender. He knew he'd been asking for too much by setting Trollian to busy and hoping everyone else would take the hint. He could never be that lucky. Shutting the program down had crossed his mind, except he knew the size and design of the shitstorm waiting behind that action. Being offline had become the unofficial signal that meant something bad had happened to the troll in question. It seemed counter intuitive to invite his dense asshole friends to come charging hell bent into his hive when he required a distraction-free environment to work.

Work that had been slow, yet steady for most of the night until this obnoxious intrusion by Sollux, the one person he truly, fervently, desperately did not want to interact with while trying to code.

Judging by the near-feverish influx of messages now pinging away any and all hope of productivity, Sollux had performed one of his polar shifts. In a lot ways, that news made Karkat happy--it meant the other wasn't languishing away under the seething muck of ennui and nihilism anymore. He'd been wallowing for weeks at this point because the bullshit side of his pan had decided to act up. Tough he'd deny it until the end of time, Karkat had started to worry this would be the one time he couldn't out-shout the things that haunted his friend's thoughts. Seeing Sollux taking an active interest in the world again most definitely counted as "a good thing."

In most of the remaining ways, however...

TA: youre iignoriing me agaiin kk.  
TA: dont make me loop your new 2y2tem 2ound2 and lock your keyboard whiile they play 2o that you have two lii2ten two the whole thiing before haviing acce22 agaiin.  
TA: actually that2 geniiu2. ii need two add that to thii2.

...it just meant Sollux's asshole potential skyrocketed to an exponential level.

A quick scan through the wall of yellow text revealed "thii2" to be a new virus project. That  explained why Karkat was the one receiving all the frenzied attention. True, they had their fair share of arguments about ability and vastly different success rates when it came to programming anything in ~ATH. The fact remained that Karkat was the only one Sollux could gush about coding to and expect something close to understanding on the subject. If he wanted to show off, there was only one audience that would suffice. The mightiest triumph and greatest folly of Karkat's life, that dubious honor right there.

He read through the chat log again, paying a little more attention to the details this time. It rambled on a lot. Many of the sentences ended up conjoined into one mass grammatical headache and topics switched almost every other line; the trademark of someone who's thoughts were flowing faster than their fingers could type. There were a couple allusions mixed into the mess about who's ass this particular pain was mean for (not anyone in their diseased little group, thank fuck). The more he read, however, the more Karkat realized he had no hope of getting out of this conversation anytime soon. Sollux wasn't just looking for recognition, preening and throwing less than subtle barbs at Karkat's ability. He was so honestly excited and enthused by how well this virus had turned out, he had to share it. A few lazy and dismissive platitudes wouldn't be enough to send him on his way. Which meant the options for dealing with this situation came down to risking Sollux's threats by ignoring him or sucking it up and playing nice for a while.

Slumping back into his chair, Karkat sighed in resignation. He did not want to do this tonight. A manic Sollux took a certain amount of patience and attention to handle, two attributes that had already been allocated towards coding. Given enough quiet and time, Karkat knew he could create an operational program. Something that now seemed impossible to achieve. Because as great as it would feel to shut Sollux down for being the infected bulge blister he chose to act like, the only thing that would accomplish was a fight. A fight that, given their history, would include both of them screaming things neither of them meant, another phrenic shift in Sollux, Karkat's computer exploding in misguided retribution, and a lot of awkward apologizing at some later date. He didn't want the weight of all that on his already overburdened shoulders, let alone have to finance another husktop this soon after their last blow-out, because he couldn't behave until Sollux got bored of him.

CG: SO WHAT PROPAGATED THIS PARTICULAR BRAND OF FUCKERY? YOU'RE NOT USUALLY THIS NICE.  
CG: AND BY NICE, I MEAN BACKHANDED, OBJECTIONABLE, AND PAINFULLY ASININE.

TA: flattery miight 2ave you thii2 tiime but ii wouldnt recommend relyiing on iit.

And so Sollux continued to vomit out a scientifically classified shit ton of nonsense into Trollian and Karkat continued to guess at what was important enough to warrant a response. The reversal in roles remained quite punishing in the beginning. Despite the demand for attention, Sollux rarely left an opening for anything other than his own thoughts. Since that did nothing to encourage dialogue, Karkat started to drift off towards other things. It took a while, but as the night dragged on without so much as a hint of slowing down, he worked out a pattern that seemed to please both of them. While he could code circles around anyone, Sollux's general words per minute output remained passable at best, even when he barreled forward at breakneck speed. Karkat found that he could ignore up to three new message alerts before needing to switch back to the conversation. He had about two more after that to get caught up enough to respond. Interjecting something, no matter how vague or useless, about every sixth ping seemed to count as enough attention being paid and Sollux would hurdle on his merry demented way without pause. It all added up to a significant amount of time to do other things, like frame a line of his own code. Quite pleased to discover his night wouldn't be a complete waste, Karkat began picking away at his own project again.

The process still had the occasional hangup. The most common mistake became typing in the wrong window. Those instances at least provoked something of an actual conversation between them, even if it primarily consisted of them sniping at one another's abilities. Several times, Karkat lost track of the number of incoming messages and fell behind. It got harder still to respond on time when Sollux started sending him snippets of the virus, which of course, Trollian garbled all to hell. Even when he could decipher the script, Karkat couldn't decide if the lines were meant as false ploys to distract and/or confuse, or roundabout on purpose to annoy. Sollux only bitched about missing the finer points when questioned, so they remained a mystery. Still, his personal code continued to build line by line. Once comfortable juggling his attention, it even seemed to start generating itself. Sure, the process may have been a slower than before (though Karkat couldn't fathom how); it was still there, getting done, which made sense in that totally dysfunctional and backwards way that most things involving Sollux did. He wasn't about to question it, thought.

The small hours before dawn were looming in by the time Karkat saved the final line. He stretched and looked over his code, a small bubble of pride started to swell in his chest. This one would work; he could feel it. It still needed to be gone over to make sure all his brackets were all closed, his loops contained, and the longer strings checked for continuity; the routine proofing stuff that winkled out the larger bugs before testing. No program was perfect the first time, not even one of Sollux's. But after countless setbacks and trying to sell the inadvertent ability to make things explode as success, Karkat knew this time would be different. His program would work. And once it did, he could cram it down his friend's throat as definitive proof he was an actual hacker, not a hack. That, however, could wait for another night. Right now, all he wanted was to grab something to eat before slipping into his coon for some well-earned rest.

CG: OKAY LISTEN UP, YOU INSUFFERABLE LISPING MENACE. BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I'VE GOT OTHER SHIT TO DO BESIDES LISTENING TO YOU WAX POETIC ABOUT HOW MUCH BIGGER YOUR FREAKY REPRODUCTIVE JUNK IS COMPARED TO EVERYONE ELSE.  
CG: LIKE INGESTING THE APPROPRIATE AMOUNTS OF NUTRITIONAL OBJECTS TO SUSTAIN LIFE AND AT LEAST ATTEMPTING TO SLEEP DURING CIVILIZED HOURS.  
CG: SO IF YOU COULD STOP THE GRATUITOUS SELF-PAILING FOR TWO MINUTES SO I CAN FINISH WHAT I'M DOING, I'D CONSIDER IT A GODDAMN IMPERIAL FAVOUR.

TA: youre not tryiing two compiile that broken a2 fuck code you 2ent me earliier are you? you cant afford two replace your hu2ktop agaiin iif you blow thii2 one two piiece2 two you know.

Karkat bristled. He wasn't going to ask how or why Sollux had that kind of information; he didn't want to know and end up madder than he already was. What he did know as that he hadn't put up with the incessant yammering all night, doing his best to be supportive and enthusiastic, so that his intelligence and ability could be insulted at the end. He'd throw himself on a culling fork first, and a rusty one at that. All the righteous indignation in the world didn't stop the seed of doubt from sprouting in the back of his mind. Maybe he should compile his program tonight just to prove potential, if nothing else. If it didn't work, then Sollux would never have to know. If it did work, then maybe the douchelord would shut up, however temporary that silence might be. In fact, doing so now sounded like the perfect capstone to the night.

CG: WHAT I DO WITH THAT CODE IS MUCH LIKE MY FINANCIAL SITUATION, ALSO KNOWN AS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.

TA: then what are you doiing?

CG: GETTING YOU A BUCKET SO THAT THE HEINOUS AMOUNTS OF GENESLIME YOU'RE DRIBBLING DOESN'T DROWN YOUR KEYBOARD.

TA: what diid ii tell you about flattery?

He didn't wait to see if Sollux had anything more to add because he no longer cared what the other thought. A part of him knew it was a mistake to attempt the first run without looking everything over again, but he told the program to compile anyway. His code was good and fuck Sollux sideways for implying otherwise.

Karkat chewed on his lip while he watched the progress bar's slow climb, ignoring Trollian's continued ringing. It felt like a lifetime of waiting for that tiny sound that told him when the program finished assembling itself. Karkat held his breath and turned away, waiting for the destruction to start. Seconds ticked by in silence. Exercising all due caution, Karkat opened his eyes to stare at his husktop. Nothing had exploded, crashed, burned, or otherwise ceased to function. His computer remained operational, all the other programs he had up and running carrying on as normal. The longer he stared, the longer nothing persisted in happening.

He surged out of his chair, a triumphant cry ringing throughout the room. Finally! After sweeps of staging failure as success, he'd managed succeed the proper way. His bloodpusher thumped hard, his breath catching as adrenaline prickled across his nerves, lighting up everything from his horns to his toes. That bubble of pride came back, filling up until it felt like he'd burst from sheer elation. He'd never felt so good about anything in his life. No wonder Sollux went manic whenever he completed something even he considered impressive; this feeling was amazing and Karkat didn't want it to stop. And it didn't; if anything, the feelings continued to intensify, swamping him in a whole host of unfamiliar but not unpleasant sensations.

High on elation and relief, it took a minute to notice that something more was happening at the same time. The feeling in his chest solidified, large and uncomfortable enough to make him gasp for his next breath. His pulse hammered in his veins with enough force his whole body throbbed in time. The prickle had turned into an active crackle of static along his skin that continued to gather strength. Then from behind it all, a strange sucking sensation persisted, like a giant vacuum had been applied to his back, trying to draw him through an opening slightly smaller than his normal dimensions. Instinct said to anchor himself so that he couldn't get dragged away, but he didn't know what was considered safe enough to cling to. Nothing else seemed affected, only him. That's when he saw the error message flashing on his screen. In a panic, Karkat lunged for his keyboard, only to never touch it.

A thundering crack broke reality as the energy that had been building exploded. It ripped through him, white hot and blinding in its intensity, burning forever along all the newly discovered recesses of his body. He might have screamed in pain, though only a roaring type of static could be heard. He might have fallen, but concepts like direction and gravity had become moot. In some remote corner of his mind, he might have worried about what would happen to everyone else if he wasn't there, might have even begged Sollux to forgive him. Then the darkness came, and the relief of oblivion remained the only certainty in the world.

***


	2. Chapter 2

Consciousness returned like an armoured boot to the head. Nothing seemed happy with his existence, least of all him. Having excessive experience in dealing with this kind of anguish, more than could be considered healthy, Karkat didn't try to move, or breathe, or even think at first. He laid as still as possible wherever the hell he happened to be, content to wait for the blaring signals of pain to taper off. Once assured he wouldn't black out should he do something stupid, he took stock of his body's condition. Nothing felt broken, but from the way a few places radiated denser depths of unhappiness, he'd bruise beautifully instead. Physical status confirmed, he tried to focus on what things might be around him. The quiet hush spoke of safety, and when he took a deeper breath, the smells were a familiar-foreign thing that confused him. Still, if it wasn't an Imperial holding cell, it couldn't be that bad...

Red eyes blinked open. The metaphorical armoured boot quit kicking in his skull long enough to stomp down on his chest instead. He remembered this room, the respite block of his hive, as clear as he remembered the last time he'd been there, hurriedly packing the few things he absolutely couldn't leave behind. Though it had always been the right choice to make, the pain of nostalgia lingered on as he stared at the past come to haunt him again.

The seconds stretched until he shook himself and rolled to his feet. The memories and what-ifs needed to wait until after he figured out what the fuck had just happened. His body ached in protest, muscles spasming, the familiar twinging sensation telling him they were about to lock up. He'd endured worse, so the quick twist-and-stretch to ensure functionality remained untempered. He scanned the room like it was enemy territory as his mind turned to piecing together his scattered thoughts. 

He recalled finishing preparations for sleep and noticing Sollux still online when the other should have already retired as well. He'd stepped up to the terminal, ready to browbeat the moron into compliance. And then...the visible arc of electricity that struck him before he touched the keyboard, growing sharply until he could feel the sparking in his teeth. Twice his life, he'd experienced that unique sensation. Once, when Sollux had unleashed the full extent of his psionic power. The other had occurred sweeps before that, when another poor judgement call had almost fried his ass. His eyes finally settled on the husktop running in front of him. He groaned.

Son of a grubfisted lusus licker, why did past him always have to be such an incompetent jerkoff?

Resisting the urge to beat his head into something solid, Karkat acknowledged the message that an error had occurred. He snorted at the inadequacy of the statement before turning his attention to the code that had prompted his current predicament. He sort of remembered what he'd been trying to do with it, though he already know it wouldn't do him a lot of good. Having already lived through the other half of this fiasco, he remembered being told that this time's Sollux would be the one to find the bug that would return him and his younger self to their appropriate places. That assurance had meant a lot to his past self. Now he chaffed at the thought of having to admit to such an idiotic fuck-up. He still didn't have much skill as a programmer, but maybe this would be an easy fix. He winced; he didn't believe that. His pride merely demanded he try and wasn't it pride that always screwed him over in the first place?

He'd spend maybe five minutes picking at the mess that had the nerve to call itself code when the noise from Trollian began to grate. Judging by the timestamps, this little case of temporal displacement hadn't taken much real time to accomplish. He didn't bother to read any of the previous text before starting to type a response.

CG: CAPTOR

Karkat paused. The gray text staring back at him seemed both very right and very wrong at the same time. He'd given the iron colour up as part of the pact he'd made to get the help he needed a long time ago. Besides, hemoanonymity didn't mean much when the list of crimes against the Empire ran twice as long as he was tall. He rolled his shoulders and continued typing.

CG: CAPTOR, I AM HAVING ENOUGH ISSUES AT THIS MOMENT THAT I COULD GIVE THEM AWAY BY THE FISTFUL ALL NIGHT AND STILL HAVE A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER LEFT OVER. SO UNLESS SOMEONE IS ABOUT TO DIE AND THEY'RE ACTUALLY IMPORTANT, LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.

TA: ii warned you kk

CG: WHAT?

The silence shattered as a loud "Hey!" broke free from the speakers. Karkat pushed away from the desk hard enough the chair almost tipped over, half expecting the husktop to explode. Several tense moments passed with nothing spontaneously combusting. The "Hey! Hey! Look! Listen!" however, continued to repeat without any clear looping point. He tried to escape out, shut down, something to make it stop, but each keystroke only made the noise louder.

"Mother _fucker_!"

In the end, he had to perform a forced shut down to make the racket to stop. He didn't dare try to reboot; knowing Sollux, the damn script would start right back up as well. Forget how awful his past self was, Sollux's past self remained worse in every way. When had he forgotten what a ripe boil his friend had been as a kid? Probably when--

He growled at himself. Action now, regret later. He didn't have a choice anymore. If the code that started this mess was to be fixed, he had to take the husktop to Sollux, if only to get the damn thing functional again. A glance to the window showed actual daylight fast approaching. How far away was Sollux's hivestem again? He worked as he calculated routes and times, bundling cables and hardware into something more transportable. Then he ransacked the room, looking for anything he could use to protect his skin. Long sleeved shirts were still the norm for him and he slept in his combat boots these days, so all he needed was something to protect his hands and face. A pair of socks turned into gloves well enough, but he wasn't as sure about the drying plane masquerading as a headscarf. Last but not least, he picked up his favorite sickle. He'd outgrown it sweeps ago, his hand too big for the handle and the blade too small for effective use, but it was still his favorite and he needed to be armed with something more than sarcasm and stubbornness issues.

Slinging the husktop against his back, Karkat paused. There wasn't any time to spare if he wanted to beat the sunrise. His eyes wandered over the room anyway, re-imprinting the sights and smells to memory. He closed his eyes and took a breath against the sudden hammering of his bloodpusher.

He regretted a lot in his life; missed opportunities, forced choices, whole destinies that could have been changed if only he'd said the right thing instead of the wrong one, things that had never been in his power to change in the first place. This, however, he would never regret, no matter how many times the universe made him do it.

Karkat turned and walked out the door.

***

Despite the number of obstacles between him and his goal--breaking daylight, questionable memory, large distances to transverse, being an adult on a planet forcibly inhabited by only wigglers--the trip from lawn circle to hivestem remained one of the easiest treks Karkat had ever made anywhere. He'd experienced harder struggles trying to secure first meal than he had making his way to Sollux's place. Not that it had been a comfortable journey to make. His eyes felt dry and irritated despite the moisture running from them. Between fatigue and having to squint the majority of the way, he had a massive headache to add to the remnant throb of electrical shock. His clothes were too thin to make sure the light couldn't reach his skin, the stinging warmth in several places a tangible reminder of how damn lucky he was. Still, he'd take a victory, no matter how small, whenever possible.

Ducking into the building brought a sigh of relief, but he didn't start to relax until he stood in the lift, rising towards Sollux's section of the stem The morning quiet remained undisturbed as Karkat keyed himself into his friend's unit. Memory didn't throttle him quite so hard this time, replaced instead with a creeping sense of deja vu as he removed his make-shift sun gear and looked around. The entry block, per typical of Sollux, remained crowded with items various service drones had dropped off that had yet to be retrieved. Past that, the recreation and the nutritional blocks stood, shuttered dark, still and stale. Back further, the obscured ablution block and the still brightly lit respite block, its door cracked open just enough to let the buzzing of the apiary frames and Sollux's mumblings spilling into the hallway.

Being less inclined to stand by any sort of formality now than ever before, Karkat simply kicked the door all the way open with a bellow that usually sent people scrambling for cover. "Captor!"

"Jesus fuck, KK, the script doesn't run that long. You could have showed some patience for a change, rather than stomp your way out here to yell at me."

Sollux didn't turn around to deliver the admonishment. His fingers hadn't even slowed their incessent ticking on the keyboard. He remained engrossed with his husktop screen as if he could code the very universe into something better if only he could find the right command statement, a million miles away from the world immediately around him. Karkat thumped his husktop down to a clean piece of floor with a disdainful noise of his own. He hadn't expected much different as far as responses went. It still irritated him. 

"We've got bigger problems than your poor excuse for a goddamn joke."

"No, you've got problems if you think I'm going to fix that outdated hunk of junk again. I'd be doing you a favour by blowing it up, seriously. Besides, I don't have time to play in the wiggler's pen tonight. I still need to code a cover for that virus, though honestly I should just dump it since I can think of about sixteen other things that would be like two hundred percent more effective against this asshat. It's not like they'd know a good piece of programming from month old grubloaf. Why waste something so ingenious on them? Now go away, KK, I've got shit to do."

Karkat rolled his eyes. "If you'd quit fucking around with equipment that doesn't belong to you, then maybe you wouldn't need to fix so much of it in return." Sollux didn't deign to respond with words. A dismissive hand waved a couple times, then went right back to typing. Usually when someone ignored him, Karkat punched them in the face until he knew he had their undivided attention. Here, however, he realized had a better opportunity. One that allowed some overdue payback, even if it technically hadn't happened yet.

"Sollux," he crooned, teeth baring in a grin as he stalked forward. The other continued to blatantly ignore him. If anything, the typing became more pointed. Karkat loomed up behind his friend, waiting the handful of seconds it took to ensure he'd been written off again. Then he grabbed the chair Sollux was enthroned in. It spun at the same time his other hand slammed down against the workstation top, trapping the other up close and personal with the only thing scarier than an Imperial Drone--a full adult.

His friend didn't disappoint. The startled yelp transformed into a strangled squeak as he jerked away instinctively, then further when it registered what exactly was leering in on him. Psionic-glazed eyes widened in surprise and horror as his limbs folded in, trying to minimize target space. A pop-fizzle of power burst in Karkat's face. Used to the scare tactic, he didn't so much as blink in surprise. His grin widened as a look of visible terror dawned on Sollux's face.

Some of the satisfaction withered away when his friend did nothing else to defend himself. The grin faded to a frown, then a scowl as Karkat straightened up. Now he understood how powerful psions got taken without much of a struggle. "A pissant response like that will get you in trouble one day," he grumbled.

Alarm morphed into shock as Sollux gaped at him like a landed seadweller.  "...KK?"

Karkat huffed a bit and crossed his arms over his chest. Final maturation hadn't changed nearly enough on him. His frame did finally fit his musculature and another fifty pounds of muscle had gotten thrown on top of that. He grown taller, though not as tall as he'd wanted, and his horns had decided to remain nubby things that threatened to get lost in his hair. Everything else was cosmetic in nature. His irises had filled in with vibrant, heretical red. His skin had darkened to a healthy shade of charcoal befitting his age. Teeth and claws had hardened and sharpened, and he'd let his untamable hair grow long in defiance to the legacy he was supposed to be carrying. Otherwise, he was as he'd always been.

"Right in one, bulgehumper. Now before you ask the obligatory questions of when and how, I'm going to state once, and only once, that past me is a blistering moron who in all honesty shouldn't have made it out of the brooding caverns. But he did, and that means I have to fix the problem he managed to create. Only I can't because some asshole hyped on on his own self-importance--that's you, nookstain--decided to screw around with the husktop protocols and crash the system I need to return to my own place in the time-space continuum. So congratulations, you get to not only unfuck the hardware, but help me unfuck the timeline, too."

The younger version of his friend closed his mouth and blinked a couple times, his mania-powered pan already flying through facts and implications. "You compiled that shitty code of yours, didn't you?" he asked, his tone saying he already knew the answer.

A warning sound rumbled in Karkat's chest. "What did I just say."

Sollux scrubbed at his face with a moaning whine. "I told you--"

"You're bitching at the wrong guy. As far as I'm concerned, this horrifying display of stupidity is six sweeps behind me, buried but obviously not dead." Karkat leaned in, hands bracing against the chair's armrests so that he could corner his friend better. "I have three nights to figure out what the fuck went wrong with a pile of code I only half remember and I can't even start doing that because you locked up my machine with hell's own chorus screeching away for twenty minutes every time I miss a goddamn keystroke. I have neither the time, nor the skill to screw around with this. Now are you going to help me, or do I have to get creative with the incentive?"

Sollux had pushed himself as far into the backrest as possible, eyes going wide again. From the way the tiny muscles jumped, Karkat guessed those eyes were darting around, watching for other signs of aggression. There was also a rising flush of colour coming to ashen skin, which had him some what concerned about how long the other had already been awake and active. It might have just been a trick of the lighting, too, he couldn't tell. In any case, he needed compliance and he wasn't above terrifying someone for it. He arched an eyebrow when the other failed to respond. Sollux startled again and swallowed awkwardly.

"So you admit you're a suckass hacker..."

Karkat stiffened. As far as barbs went, that one was pretty mild. It still struck with the force of a sucker punch. He looked away as he tried to sort the guilt from the remorse. Being a programmer was a redundancy he didn't have the luxury of time to pursue, let alone the ability. Too much depended on his other skills. Too many people depended on _him_. Yet one more thing on an ever growing list of shit that hadn't turned out the way he'd hoped. He stood up, still avoiding his friend's gaze. "I've had other things to worry about."

That response earned him another wide-eyed look. Karkat braced for the inevitable questions about his timeline, but they never came. They sat in awkward silence instead, until Sollux cleared his throat and asked, "So, uh...three nights, huh? What happens after that, you turn into a pretty princess at dawn or something?"

Praise the horrorterrors for Captors and their unfailing snark. "Hell if I know, but that's how long it took when I was on the other end of this catastrophe. If I don't want to completely fuck over my timeline, that's how long I've got." He side-eyed Sollux, then added, "And fuck you for implying I'm not already a pretty princess. I'm the prettiest fucking princess you'll ever meet."

Sollux chocked on his tongue for a second before sputtering into a laugh. "Whatever you say, KK. Now where's the shitbox you call a husktop? We're wasting moonlight."

"Daylight," Karkat corrected. "It's been daylight for a while now, actually. And since I've already put in more than a full day's work before getting fried by past me's idiocy, not to mention having to haul ass here before the sun finished the job, I'm going to make my last sane decision of the day and demand sleep. And since you are running hot, I'm going assume you haven't slept in two days, either. So I suggest you get your ass into the coon and sleep some before attempting anything."

The look of indignation that crossed Sollux's face would have been hysterical if any of this had been a joke. "You can't be serious. You expect me to sleep after you drop this shit in my lap? I thought you said you had a deadline!"

"I'm as serious as a culling drone. Don't tell yourself otherwise. But what I need is a peak performance from you, Captor; I won't get that if I let you run wild through this upswing of yours. Which means your choices are willingly trying to rest for a while now, or I throw you in and hold you under until you pass out. Make a decision."

Sollux sputtered until Karkat moved like he was going to pick the other up. "Okay, okay, fine! I'm going! Fucking hell..." He popped up from his chair and shot past Karkat without stumbling much. "You're not my lusus, you know."

"Nope," Karkat agreed without pause, "just the pan-rotted fool who thinks you're worth having around."

A look was cast his way, but whatever Sollux meant to say, he thought better of it. Karkat took it as a sign there would be no further argument. Satisfied, he walked into the ablution block, which looked like it needed a wash of it's own, to inspect the still tender sunburns while the other got ready to sleep. A part of him wanted another shower, but a glance at the trap itself told him he wanted to be more disgusting than it before climbing in. Satisfied nothing needed direct medical attention, he returned to the respite block. Sollux had made it into the recuprecoon already. Whether it was defiance or practicality, he continued to drone to himself as he wrote down lines of code on the surface behind the coon. The sopor at least seemed to be helping slow him down, even if it couldn't stop him completely. Karkat knew that was the best he could hope for while the other remained caught in mania's grip.

A surge of confused pity wash through him as he watched; too protective to be pale, too soothing to be flushed, and wildly inappropriate either way. He wanted to slide into the sopor behind his friend and nuzzle and pet him until he slept, chase away the voices with his own so that Sollux had a little peace in his own mind. He'd always wanted that, despite the fact he'd never acted upon the desire. Knowing what he did about what was to come next only made the feeling push at him harder. It was also too late. He had another diamond to worry about, one that was instrumental in keeping a lot of people alive. Despite everything that said they should have ended up with some pretty pink diamonds between them, he couldn't risk going to Sollux now and fucking shit up worse later. So, as usual, he shook off the feeling and focused on something else instead.

His fingers skimmed though the sopor in the other half of Sollux's coon. When was the last time he'd touched real sopor, let alone slept in it? He might be able to fit in the unused half, but his boots would never be the same again. Taking them off to sleep wasn't something he felt comfortable doing, even relatively secure in the knowledge that nothing would happen during his sleep cycle. It seemed a crime to be so close to the stuff and not use it, however. In the end, he settled for smearing it across his skin, layering it thick across the burns and bruises under his clothes. Then he turned down the lights and wandered out to the recreation block, stretching out on the platform there to sleep.

A part of him already regretted choosing the platform over his friend. The rest of him just felt like a two-timing creep. He sighed as he stared at the ceiling. It was going to be a long three nights.

***


	3. Chapter 3

Pain gnawed at him like a barkbeast with a bone, dragging Karkat ever further away from the bliss of unconsciousness with each grind of burning agony. No matter what he did, it was wrong, and the price he paid for each transgression left him convulsing. The world blurred together with time, lost behind the pain that seemed to come from everywhere at once and nowhere at all. At one point, he found himself wondering if this is what it was like to die; surely that meant it had to stop at some point. The mental space to think only sharpened his awareness, bring to light each individual complaint his body gained against him. He floundered further until he had the room to think of something else. 

Threshecutioners were unstoppable because they could endure catastrophic amounts of pain to complete a mission. Though he was still several sweeps out from any actual training, Karkat had been through multiple schoolfeedings on the subject. He tried to relax, letting the empty thoughts soak up the tumult of oversensitive nerves, allowing a sort of numbness to start falling over him.  _Break the body's connection to the mind. The body will carry forth without direction. It knows what it must do. Don't fuck it up by thinking. Be aware without being involved..._

He must have gone too far, blacking out completely. The next thing he was aware of was staring at a wall without actually seeing it. It still felt like he'd been on the losing end of a strife with an ironhide, stripped and brittle. Pain wasn't the whole world, either. He blinked a couple times to make the room focus. Then he checked himself over with the utmost care, looking for any telltale blood or bruising that would give him away. Once assured his hemoanonymity remained intact, he started looking around.

He'd been laying on a floor covered in the most utilitarian carpet he'd ever seen. The rest of the room seemed less function over form, though not by much. Gray metal structure created a foundation for the myriad of frosted glass-like panels that made up the base structure. Everything was arranged to make the best use of the limited available space, ensuring the environment remained clutter free. A single dim lamp on a tiny desk was enough to illuminate the whole room. The few personal affects he could see told him this was the smallest respite block he'd ever seen. But why the hell was he here? And where the fuck was here anyway?

Curiosity overtook nervousness. He wobbled to his feet, giving his surroundings a more thorough inspection. Everything there could have fit into one of his hive's blocks with room to spare, even with the ablution chamber attached to one side. He decided whoever lived here had good taste; he had that exact same poster hanging on his wall. And three of the books on the tiny bookshelf were worn copies of his favorite books. And the opposite wall had an amazing collection of sickles, including--. His jaw dropped, all the muscles in his back tensing up. Centered in the display was  _his_  sickle, his best one. The one that made him feel like he could take on anything and win.

Karkat froze, suddenly aware of the almost imperceptible hum coming up through his feet. An idea itched at him as he took a second look at the base structure surrounding him. He couldn't account for the tech or design, but the blocking of the room had all the right hallmarks. He shook his head, trying to dislodge  the nagging awareness that he didn't have a clue how long he'd been incapacitated. It didn't make any sense, he had no definite proof; he still couldn't shake the conviction that he was on a starship.

An annoyed beep from the desk-side terminal almost startled him out of his skin. Bloodpusher racing, Karkat sidled up to the terminal, terrified yet interested to see what the issue might be. Maybe he could find some answers there. A chat client flashed with a message. It wasn't Trollian, or any other peer-to-peer program Karkat recognized. The screen name, however, was definitely familiar.

TA: 2y2tem noted an energy 2urge miidport2iide @ 3800  
TA: techniical report2 nomiinal  
TA: per22onel report2 nothiing of iintere2t  
TA: yo kk thii2 ii2 you. what the hell ju2t happened?

CG: SOLLUX

His blood ran cold as the burning red text scrolled across the screen. His handle, his formatting, in mutinous, vibrant red. It made him feel sick and exposed even though it felt an uncomfortable sort of right as well. That frightened him more than anything else so far. Another aggravated ping did nothing to settle his nerves.

TA: uh yeah who el2e u2e2 thii2 channel? of cour2e iit2 me.

The text appeared one letter at a time, scrolling out in quick succession as if it had been just typed in. That meant it was a direct feed rather than a user defined send. He needed to be careful--no second chance to think better of what he said.

CG: SOLLUX, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

TA: that2 what iim a2kiing you dumb2hiit  
TA: youre the clo2e2t one two whatever the dii2ruptiion wa2 2o you tell me.

CG: I

Karkat fussed at the program , trying to change the font colour while he struggled to find a good answer. What was he supposed to say? One minute he'd been starting at an error message in his own hive. The next, he was here, feeling like he'd been put through a grinder. He didn't know what had happened because nothing about the end result made sense. He wasn't certain of anything at the moment. He couldn't even be sure it was Sollux he was talking to. 

Oh fuck, what if it  _wasn't_  Sollux he was talking to? What if...?

TA: hello? you 2till there?  
TA: kk are you all riight?

CG: NO, I AM NOT ALL RIGHT. I'M IN A ROOM THAT'S NOT MINE BUT STILL HAS MY STUFF IN IT, TYPING IN THE MOST HIDEOUS COLOUR IN THE UNIVERSE AFTER RECEIVING THE WORST ELECTRICAL SHOCK OF MY MISERABLE, INSIGNIFICANT LIFE. BEING ALL RIGHT LEFT THE PARTY HOURS AGO, HOPPED ONTO A TRANSPORT TO THE OUTER RING AND FUCKING DIED ON THE WAY THERE. THAT IS HOW *NOT* FINE I AM AT THIS MOMENT.

TA: what are you goiing on about?  
TA: diid you get iintwo GZ2 2oporiifiic2 agaiin?

CG: I'M PRETTY FUCKING SOBER FOR SOMEONE WHO'S SUPPOSED TO BE HIGH. OR MAYBE I'M SO HIGH I SOBERED UP AGAIN. THAT WOULD GO A LONG FUCKING WAY TOWARDS EXPLAINING WHY I HAVEN'T FLIPPED MY SHIT YET.   
CG: OH WAIT. I TOTALLY *AM* FLIPPING MY SHIT AND YOUR HARASSMENT ISN'T HELPING ANYTHING!  
CG: WHERE THE HELL AM I?? WHY THE FUCK AM I TYPING IN RED? WHY CAN'T I CHANGE IT? I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE NOT SOLLUX. JUST TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON!  
CG: PLEASE.

TA: whoa ok calm down a biit. take a breath or 2omethiing whiile ii try two fiigure out what  
TA: oh  
TA: oh 2hiit wa2 now when that happened?

CG: IS NOW WHEN WHAT HAPPENED? CAN YOU BE MORE VAGUE ON THE MATTER?

TA: ju2t an2wer ye2 or no  
TA: diid you compiile any code recently?

CG: ...MAYBE.

TA: okay look. iim kiinda engaged riight now 2o ii need you two come two me iif iim goiing two explaiin everythiing. ju2t 2tep out the door and follow the liight2. they'll lead you riight two me.

CG: YOU SERIOUSLY EXPECT ME TO TO LEAVE THIS ROOM ON YOUR WORD ALONE? JUST BECAUSE I MAKE A LOT OF POOR LIFE DECISIONS DOESN'T MEAN I WAS HATCHED YESTERDAY.  
CG: WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME NOW?

TA: becau2e thii2 i2nt 2omethiing that 2hould be on record no matter how priivate.  
TA: now ii2 your be2t chance two do thii2. everyone el2e ii2 a2leep or otherwii2e bu2y. no one wiill 2top or que2tiion you.  
TA: plea2e kk ii know iit2 a lot two 2wallow riight now but ii need you two tru2t me on thii2  
TA: ju2t follow the gold liights and youll be fiine

CG: I'M HOLDING YOU TO THAT, BULGEWAD. IF I DIE SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, I'M GOING TO HAUNT YOUR ASS UNTIL THE END OF DAYS.

TA: niice two know youve alway2 had 2o much faiith iin me.

***

The pocket door slid open of it's own volition with the barest of whispers when Karkat walked up to it. After acclimating to the respite block's minimal lighting, the hallway was almost blinding. He squinted against the brightness before poking his head out. The same design aesthetics continued out there, leaving no place for a body to hide. Everything was quiet and still. He then ducked back into the room to grab a weapon, just in case. Though one of the honest-to-god battle sickles would have served better against whatever he might encounter, he took his favorite from the display. Everything else was too big or heavy for proper use. And even if it wasn't, it was a bad idea to walk into a potentially hostile situation with an unfamiliar weapon. He'd already been stupid enough for one night.

Faking as much confidence as possible, Karkat left the room. The hallway loomed up around him, much larger now that he had stepped into it, and eerie in its silent, luminescent state. The simple metal work gleamed silver at regular intervals, creating the support structure for slightly cured walls of frosted white that ran unbroken from floor to ceiling. The light diffused through the walls themselves, leaving the open grating in the ceiling unimpeded for air circulation. All the textures seemed smooth to the eye, but he didn't touch to see if looks equaled reality. He looked back to the door he'd just exited. The black hole of the room beyond seemed more like a pause rather than a break in the wall around it.

Again, his instincts screamed spaceship. Nothing he knew came close to what he was seeing, though. Definitely not Imperial, that was for certain. Too much elemental construction and not enough chitin. He craned his neck, trying to look at as much as he could. Finally, he focused on the patient dot of golden yellow light flashing on the wall next to the door. He panicked as it shot off in one direction, trailing a comet tail of colour behind it. A new light soon replaced it before it too went flying off, creating a repeating pattern. Only then did Karkat realize the walls doubled as screens that data could be projected on to.  Trying not to crowd along the edge of the hallway, Karkat followed where it lead.

The lights lead him to a lift. As quiet as the respite block door, the only reason he knew he was moving was the extra pressure in his feet. He couldn't be sure how many floors he went up; not many because the trip didn't last long. Then a short way down another hallway, this time terminating at a larger door. The room beyond was large and outlined by the sparce light coming from a large viewscreen that dominated one side. Karkat almost didn't notice the handful of terminals and seats that meant this place acted as the bridge of a starship, captivated instead by the image of the boundless space currently up on the screen.

"Yeah, I like the view, too."

It was little less nasal and a little bit deeper. Karkat still knew without a doubt that it was Sollux who had spoken. He turned, the blistering tirade on his tongue scalding only his own throat when he actually saw the other. Like everything else so far, he couldn't place the technology. He still knew what he was looking at was a Helmblock. Set into the wall opposite the viewscreen, the most notable feature was the tube filled with slightly luminescent liquid that Sollux's body was suspended in. Tendrils of biowire, a metallic gray infused with gold rather than Tyrian fuchsia, curled around his limbs and torso like cultivated vines on a statue. This was then connected to a whole wall of electronic panels that bowed back, creating an oval out of the room.

"KK?"

The sound came from unseen speakers, as clear as if they were standing right next to each other. That meant Sollux had some autonomy. The thought did nothing to quell the raw horror welling up in Karkat. The sickle dropped from paralyzed fingers. He felt sick, light headed, heavier than stone. The room blurred as he swayed on his feet. His best friend, locked up like a glorified battery. The one nightmare that he'd had the power to challenge and it still ended like this? Under glass wasn't any better than strung up like a puppet, slowly being absorbed by the ship. How could he have let this happen? Never mind the logistics and timing didn't add up. He'd failed. 

He'd failed and worse yet, Sollux had paid the price for that failure. It was one thing to get screwed over by his own stupidity. But to have someone else suffer because he couldn't keep his act together was beyond sickening. And now he had to stare at the fruits of his shortcomings, knowing it was all his fault. Knowing that there was nothing he could do about it. Was that why his stuff was here? To rub it in his face at every opportunity? Or was he the means to keep Sollux in line? That thought almost hurt worse. How badly had he fucked up to be used as bait to keep the other compliant? Nothing else mattered all that much anymore, how any of this had come to be. He didn't want to be a part of it. He'd rather be dead than a cause or a chain.

"Shit--  _shit!!_  KK, no, I-- Just hang on a second!"

Karkat didn't see the series of panels that closed off the visible part of the block fall into place. He didn't hear the releasing of pressure as things began disengaging. He was too far down the black well of self-loathing to notice anything other than the nausea churning his guts into knots. The constriction in his throat refused to loosen enough so that he could vomit them onto the floor. Choking to death on his own entrails was a pretty inglorious way to go. It was also more dignity than he deserved.

Entropic darkness had almost consumed him when a body slammed into his. Cool but warming fast, it curled around him, holding him tight in an effort to brace him. The sharp smell of ozone stung Karkat's nose. The metallic tang under it was strong enough it could be tasted. "Breathe, KK." The entreating voice was Sollux's, soft and striving for calm in his ear. "Just focus on breathing for a while, okay? Everything's fine."

Given the alternative, Karkat latched on to the vain hope that voice inspired. His claws dug into cloth as he buried his face into the neck of the one holding him. His breath came in tiny, erratic gasps that had nothing to do with putting air into his lungs and everything to do with not screaming out the noxious roil of emotions inside him. The body around his began to move, a gentle rocking motion that came in tandem with a low static buzz, isolating him from the other ambient noise in the room. With the world constricted down to two pulses, one steady and rhythmic, the other wildly out of control, it became somewhat easier to exist. 

The threat of passing out came back a couple times. Despite how attractive numb nothingness was, he remained aggravatingly lucid. He chocked several times more when bile pressed up against his tonsils until the nausea waned to a dull cramp. The feelings that had almost overwhelmed him ebbed away to numb apathy. Lethargy took panic's place, slowing the rest of him down in turn. He sagged into the embrace still holding him upright. He'd spent almost eighty-four hours awake once and still hadn't felt as exhausted then as he did now.

At some point, he became aware of the outside world again. The static had gone away, replaced with a rocky, hiccuping purr. It was rather mortifying to realize that sound was coming from him, but Karkat still lacked the strength to care. Sollux, for once showing discretion, made no mention of it when it choked off.

He gathered the shattered remains of his composure together. Claws still embedded in the other's clothing, Karkat leaned back until he could look the person holding him in the eye. It was a bit creepy to watch those yellow irises watch him in turn, darting around in pools of the more familiar psionic red and blue. It was definitely Sollux who held him, but an older one. One with the darkening skin and features of someone past final maturation. The dual sets of horn had grown, looking sharp enough now to cause some serious damage. The tips of his twined fangs still poked out over his lower lip. It was hard to judge things like height and stature when sitting on the floor, but it felt like the other was still a stick, albeit a thicker one. 

He should have felt terrified. Too exhausted for such extreme emotions, all Karkat really felt was relief that Sollux had survived long enough to grow this old.  When their eyes met again, Sollux seemed amused by the scrutiny. Karkat relaxed a bit more as familiar and welcomed ire started to smolder.

"What. The actual. Fuck."

***


	4. Chapter 4

The question hung in the air for a whole second before Sollux smiled in that way that meant he was about to say something infuriating. "Well, the long version starts with you miraculously surviving the brooding caverns." Karkat glowered at him. A forked tongue poked out as the grin widened. "The short version is your program worked; just not like you intended. Somehow, you managed to mash your code and my virus together into a functioning time-loop. So now you are six sweeps in the future. And the KK that should be here is six sweeps in the past. That's why this conversation can't be on record. It...complicates a lot of things if anyone else knows you're here. There's no need to worry, though. It'll only take past-me three nights to stumble across the error and fix it. I could have found it sooner if future-you hadn't bothered me so much about stupid shit, so try to remember that later, okay?"

_Six sweeps?_  Of all the half-information he'd just been given, that statement left the deepest impression. Some of Karkat's exhaustion melted away as implications starting piling up. If there was a version of him  _six sweeps in the future_ , that meant he had survived to adulthood. More amazing than that, he'd made it off-world. And so had Sollux, even though that still included... The rest of that thought was glossed over before panic could twist him into more knots. Sollux was here, in front of him, tangible under hands that had yet to release their grip. Karkat focused on getting his fingers to relax as he started considering the rest of his friend's "explanation."

First came wonderment. His program had worked! Sure, it hadn't come anywhere near it's original intended purpose. He also hadn't blown another husktop to scrap, either. A little bit of his triumph melted away since Sollux still knew how screwed up the program was. A little more died because once again, it would be also be Sollux who fixed his coding mistakes. The notion that he’d be stuck hiding for three days struck another blow to his lifting spirits, though even that was acceptable considering what he’d managed to accomplish. Then his eyes narrowed as one particular statement sank in. "So why the ever-loving fuck did I have to come to you? If no one's supposed to know, why parade me though the halls with the goddamn light show announcing my presence?"

A chagrined look crossed Sollux's face. "Because I'm a fucking moron. You were freaking out, all the data logs had to be scrubbed, I thought that I could get everything done before you got here, and..." He trailed off with a sigh. "And I thought it'd be funny to spook you with the whole Helmsman thing. I've been waiting a long time to pay you back for scaring the shit out me. I honestly didn't expect you to shut down like that or I would have made you wait.” He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away. “It was a dick move, I admit that. But I wanted you to see something other than the hole you decided to live in. I figured after that everything, the least  _you_ deserved was to see what space actually looks like."

Karkat twisted around to look back at the view-screen, this time focusing what was there. Lights of all colours filled the screen, sparkling like tiny gems meticulously placed on velvet. The school feedings always included a certain number of images, but they lacked the vibrancy he saw now. He could pick out several binary and tertiary stars, the many colours of closer nebulae clouds, and even the tails of a slowly swirling galaxy far beyond so many of the other star lights. 

He'd never admit it (though maybe future-him already had?), but he had never imagined he'd get to see such a sight. Though he's shed the small-minded paranoia at a young age, the specter of a culling drone had always shadowed his thoughts of the future. There were so many way to end up dead without being a genetic anomaly on top of all. And the odds of making it off-world had never been in his favour, either, even if he had survived that long. But he got to see them now. He'd get to see them  _again_. And that realization erased the remaining haze from his thoughts.

"Where are we?" he asked, only somewhat aware that he'd spoken aloud.

Sollux spouted off a coordinate set that probably meant something to a computer and little to anyone else. Karkat glanced back at his friend to see if he was being obtuse on purpose again. The guileless look on the other’s face became another queasy reminder that Sollux was part of a computer now. Such responses might be considered normal behaviour rather than him succeeding at being an ass. Karkat contemplated snarking back, just to ease the emotional edge. That took more energy than he felt like spending. So he skipped right over to rephrasing the question. “I meant the ship.”

“Designation ARC-1001; registered FSC Harbinger.”

The acronym FSC sounded familiar, but Karkat couldn’t place it. He didn't spend much time trying to remember, either. Instead, he grimaced at the name.  _Harbinger_ smacked of manifest-destiny indentation that seemed out of place with what he'd seen of the ship. It lacked imagination, soul--that elusive, uplifting quality that a well-named ship seemed to posses. He’d probably over-romanticized the process, but the name set the tone for all that it would do, how it served, and how the crew aboard behaved. He couldn’t imagine himself working well on such a humdrum vessel, regardless of his duty type. His aversion must have shown because a few beats later, Sollux added, “Those of us who serve call her the Esperance.”

_Esperance_. The word rolled around Karkat’s mouth even though his jaw never moved. It made something inside him warm and relax a little bit more with each pass. It definitely fit better than  _Harbinger_  ever would, despite the fact he wasn’t sure what it meant.

After a little prodding, Sollux continued on, going over some of the aspects of the ship. It was battleship built on a raider endoskeleton, relying mostly on speed to keep ahead of a fight, but able hit hard when it mattered. At the bare minimum, it required a crew of two, a Helmsman and someone who handled the combat system, though a full compliment of nearly fifty others could be safely housed. Karkat could only follow along so far before getting lost in the terminology. It felt like he should have understood more. He’d been through those schoolfeedings recently, so it wasn’t like he’d had a chance to forget anything yet. It all sounded rote as well, like a technical manual being recited. There was no mention of current crew, missions, or status interwoven in, nor any other sort of emotional inflection to what was being said. Maybe it was an effect of the Helmsman conditioning? He abruptly stopped thinking about it, leaning into the much larger body to once more affirm his friend’s realness. Then he focused on what he did understand; the ship was the first and so far only of its kind, and he played a major role on it.

The excitement in that revelation lasted only as long as it took to ask what his rank was. Sollux snapped his mouth shut with an audible click in lieu of answering. At first, the shut down concerned Karkat; was this another weird side effect? He got ready to ask if everything was okay when he noticed those yellow irises were staring at him with sadness and maybe even a little pity. A sinking feeling developed in his still sore stomach, cold and spikey as things began clicking together. The ship wasn’t made of the right materials. He didn’t understand how anything worked. Karkat felt his friend’s grip tighten. Then he remembered what FSC stood for.

He swayed on his feet again as the world shifted once more under him. It had always been a pipe dream, a vanity he’d flirted with because he was supposed to die before it got that far. Why not aim for the unobtainable? Maybe if he'd been skilled enough, dedicated enough,  _worthy enough_...maybe he wouldn’t be strung up in the irons of his own sign for simply existing. Karkat understood, and even vaguely appreciated, that his friend hadn’t outright lied in response to the question. It’d be sweeps, after all, before a lie would be caught. Still, Sollux had chosen the lesser of two evils by not saying anything. With nothing to confirm or deny, the illusion of a dream come true held, even if it was now cracked and faltering. 

Karkat knew he should let it go. He already had so much. He got to grow up, get off-world, live on a gorgeous ship, travelling through space...all more than he’d ever dared to hope for. It shouldn’t have mattered if the one driving dream behind it all hadn’t come to pass.

But it did. He had to know.

He trembled with the effort to keep himself steady. His hands ached from how tightly they were now clenched. His breath and determination stuttered when he matched gazes with Sollux. “I don’t have a rank,” he stated before he could second-guess himself again.

Sollux didn’t look away, but he dry swallowed before replying, “You don’t have a rank.”

The illusion cracked further and a reverberating shudder ran through Karkat. He sucked in another breath through his teeth. “Because this isn’t an Imperial ship.”

A look of pain crossed Sollux’s face and a part of Karkat felt bad for forcing his friend to do this. There wasn't much of an alternative, though, and they both knew it. “This isn’t an Imperial ship."

There was a sickening lurch as something inside Karkat splintered. He remained only distantly aware of it, focused solely upon breaking his life-long dream. He had to shatter it completely. It could never be salvaged, never again be something whole and shining and true. It would drive him crazy if even the slightest possibility remained. It had to be torn down, even if it left a sucking wound behind. “I serve the Followers of the Signless.”

For a moment, it seemed as though the other would return to his noncommittal silence. The pity in those yellow eyes said enough that words were almost unnecessary. Then, with the utmost reluctance, Sollux said, “You serve the Coalition.”

Reality broke in absolute silence. Karkat stared at the shattered remains of his threshecutioner ambition and tried to feel something, anything. All that was left anymore was exhaustion. He wanted the pain of it, but before he could try to drive the shards any deeper, Sollux pressed a hand to his face. Karkat reached up to pull it away, only to then notice his friend's hand was wet, the palm streaked with translucent red.

“Enough, KK,” Sollux said before he could figure out why the other would have red on him. “I’ll tell you more later, that’s enough for one night.”

Whatever he couldn’t feel seemed to be pouring out of Sollux instead, a weirdness compounded by the fact Karkat could see all of it in eyes he’d never been able to scrutinize before. It was too much to take--he turned away until his gaze hit the view screen again. It took a while, but the wonder there eventually came back. He let it overwhelm his awareness of everything else, including the arms that once more wrapped around him, the head that came to rest on his shoulder, and the apology the remained unspoken between them.

Once the oppressive silence had eased to something more companionable, Sollux asked, “Can you walk?” 

The thought alone made Karkat’s knees feel like jelly, which in turn made his stomach roll. He still stumbled to his feet. The purring earlier had been bad enough. Like hell he would let himself get carried anywhere. Sollux made no comment. The feeling of pressure bracing and stabilizing his legs turned out to be comment enough. Karkat scowled half-heartedly. Sollux returned it with a grin that proved he still had too many teeth stuffed in his face gash before gesturing for him to lead the way. Karkat stomped unsteadily towards the door he’d entered from, the other trailing behind him.

Despite “leading,” Karkat knew the only reason he got back to the room he’d started in was because Sollux was there. He just wasn’t sure how. Neither of them had said anything along the way. The force helping hold him upright hadn’t been guiding his movements as far as he could tell, and Sollux seemed to just be following along. The lift still took them to the appropriate floor without instruction and the respite block door opened before they even reached it. He gave the other a suspicious look, but he was ignored. Instead, Sollux moved with certainty through the room. His hand brushed a panel in a back corner and a section of the wall slid open, spilling something like an oversized chrysalis into the room. Suspended on thick, telescoping barbs and coloured a matte gray, Karkat watching in dull fascination as it continued to expand. Fully extended and fluffed in less than ten seconds, the oddly shaped contraption took up about a third of the available floor space.

“The material is sopor-infused down to the molecular level,” Sollux babbled as he opened the chrysalis up, revealing an interiour that was both iridescent and fuzzy looking, as if a bunch of heat-retaining planes had been stuffed into the flexible outer casing. “The more skin that comes in contact with it, the better it works, but everyone has their own preferences. It’s not a recuprecoon, but it’s comfortable and way easier to get in and out of in a hurry. Less messy, too.” He crossed the room again in two long strides, sliding into the desk chair and clicking away at the terminal there. “There’s probably something in the ablution block if you don’t want to sleep in your clothes.”

With no will to argue, Karkat wobbled into the tiny side chamber, grateful when the door slid closed behind him. He stared at nothing for long time, trying to sift through the broken feeling in his chest. Nothing more  profound came of it, so he abandoned the pieces and tried to focus on getting ready to sleep. A glance in the mirror told him he looked about as good as he felt. He scrubbed the pink streaks from his face, then downed several cups of water in large gulps. His insides ached at the sudden introduction of fluid even as his body cried for more. Both conditions were ignored. He peeled out of his clothes, down to his underwear since he didn't have anything else to wear, and left it all in a semi-neat pile on the floor, unable to care further about taking proper care of anything.

Sollux still waited in the respite portion when he exited. Having finished whatever he’d done at the terminal, he too had stripped out of most of his clothes. Bare now save for a loose pair of pants, Karkat could confirm his best friend was still pushing unhealthily skinny, but at least he was no longer all gristle and uncomfortable angles. His skin flashed briefly as he turned from where he’d been studying the sickle display. Karkat dismissed it as a trick of his over-tired pan. Instead, he looked back at the odd contraption he was supposed to sleep in, trying to figure out how it worked. It didn't seem like it could hold water, let alone the weight of a body. 

The problem was solved for him; Sollux stepped into it first. Contrary to looks, the whole thing barely moved as he settled and extended a hand to Karkat. He took it without a second thought. 

The cocoon-thing turned out to be pretty comfortable. While indeed as fuzzy as it appeared, the interior also had a cool-wet feel to it. Karkat’s skin tingled pleasantly wherever the material brushed against it, lending to the illusion of being suspended in actual slime. There was enough room for the both of them to move even though the limited space still had them curling into one another. The thought that it might be a little weird for him to sleep so close to an adult was lost under the nostalgia and familiarity of having his best friend near. After everything else that had just happened, sleeping alone would have been difficult regardless of how tired he felt. But with the steady thump of a blood pusher against his cheek and the smell of ozone drifting around him, Karkat allowed himself to drift into exhausted slumber, knowing that at least in this moment, everything was fine.

***


	5. Chapter 5

The sun had just touched the horizon when Karkat woke up. Disorientation lasted only as long as it took for him to get his eyes focused. Then it gave way to the egregious ache that was the rest of him. He groaned as he pulled himself upright; he remembered the platform being more comfortable than this. He’d fallen over strangely in his sleep and the resulting kinks complained with obnoxious insistence. Everything creaked or popped in protest, turning the simple process of sitting up into an unexpected hassle. Even his knuckles snapped as he massaged away the knots, trying to get his think-pan to focus on something more than how badly he hurt. Like what was he going to do with himself for the next three nights?

Usually, he stepped out of the sleeping pod with a list of chores already in mind. First he checked over the ship, updating himself on location, transit time, condition, and anything else that might have happened while he’d been asleep. If there was nothing worth busting someone over immediately, he went through his calisthenic routine, washed up, and went out for first meal. Often, there wasn’t time to sit and enjoy the food, so he’d wolf if down on his way to the bridge and the start of another cycle.

There was no ship update to scroll through, however, and the break in routine made him slightly anxious. Nothing weird outside of his younger self should be happening (if his experience was truth, and that as a big fucking IF). But it had been quiet for a while now, which usually meant the universe was setting up some other fantastical way to screw him over in the near future. The inability to prepare for wherever was coming scraped at him. He hated waiting and that was about all he could do at the moment.

Well, no, not all that he could do. Per typical of Sollux, his living space was a disaster zone. Turning it into something less than a garbage heap would not only be a good use of his nervous attention, but also a form a payment for tearing apart the awful coding that caused all the problems in the first place. Karkat needed to work out the stiffness in his body, now more than ever, and manual labour did that as well as anything else. And if he made food, he could make sure Sollux ate, too. If nothing else, his clothes would need to be washed along with the rest of him at some point. He had plenty to do, if he so chose.

Karkat did choose, starting with a trip to the load gapper and a second look at that vile cubicle of an ablution chamber. He noted the lights were back up in the respite block on his way there. Sollux had probably been up for hours already; hard to rest when everything felt like it had to be done right now. Bypassing his original destination, Karkat paused outside the door to listen. The drone of the apiary frames remained strong under the rhythmic click of keys. Not the clamour of information being pounded out, but the even tic-tic-tic of scrolling, moving just fast enough to keep the information being read at eye level. The occasional hissing grumble was the only other counterpoint to the otherwise focused noise.

He hesitated for a moment, then stepped back. Funneling all that manic energy into one task didn’t seem any healthier than letting it run sixteen separate places at once. He still needed a better reason to interrupt. It would be a fight to pull Sollux from his task now that he was set to it. Might as well make that fight worth something. Besides, he could hardly haul himself around at the moment--not the preferred condition to be in before tussling with a psionic. That was a mistake made only once and Karkat had made it sweeps ago.

Backtracking to the ablution block, he revised his immediate options. The trap looked no less awful than it had the night before, though between the still tacky sopor on his skin and the sweat that would come from working, it wouldn’t take long to be more disgusting than it. If he washed his clothes first, he’d have something clean to wear afterward as well. That would take up an hour, if not two, making it full night by the time he’d haul Sollux away for food. That should be enough time to quell any riot about not being given enough time to work.

Plan of attack set, Karkat returned to the recreation block. He pushed the platform to one side to free up some space, corralling the miscellaneous junk to the sidelines so that he didn’t trip or break anything. He didn’t need a lot of space, which meant clearing it didn’t take long. The dimensions were counted off twice before he was satisfied he’d recreated his normal living space. Then he stripped off his shirt, casting it out of the way before finding his mark in the middle of the allotted room. A deep breath, a carefully counted exhale, and then he was lost to the calm thoughtlessness of routine.

Stretching came first, from head to toe and back again, warming muscles to the idea of movement. Nearly everything hurt somehow and refused to cooperate in the beginning. Karkat worked carefully and diligently to loosen up; nothing would suck more than injuring himself and becoming even more useless than he already was. As the protesting faded, his activity changed, flowing smoothly from passive to active. His blood pusher picked up its pace and his movement fell into sync with it. Push, pull, up, down. Base moves that provided the foundations for more complicated action rolled out one after another in practiced perfection. He went through them several times to guarantee that perfection before building on them. Engage, break, dodge, return. Despite having limited formal training and stealing moves from otherwise incompatible sources, he’d beaten everything he knew about fighting into a seamless flow. Threshecutioner Close Combat Form #8 melted into a Vallhand Hook and Twist, which set up the Dargon in Mists and lead straight into an Archon Hammer before becoming either Long Distance Combat Form #12 or an Ills'an Viper Strike.

At some point, closing his eyes had become part of the routine. The visual data wasn’t nearly as important as making sure his body followed each action through correctly, so he didn’t waste time with it. He knew where the walls were, how to drop to the floor without kicking his desk, how to swing his hands so that his sickle didn’t catch on anything. In the absence of sight, his mind created opponents. There were certainly enough in memory to pick from. His pace picked up again as he engaged with the monsters in his head, tearing through one after another until he came to the only one he hadn’t defeated before. The one that had nearly ended his inglorious command before it truly started. The fear and desperation, rage and will of that fight came back in sharp detail, pushing him even harder. He hadn’t been ready then, had known so little about anything other than the Empire’s propaganda and still getting used to the changes of final maturation. Now, though. Now he was stronger, faster, more skilled, and even if that wasn’t enough to win, he could--

“--oh _shit_!”

The mental space shattered. Karkat came back to reality, poised in a half-crouch, ready to lunge forward and eviscerate the enemy that had sneaked up on him. Sollux stared back at him with a mixture of wariness and too much wonder. The acknowledgment of a friend clashed with the intensity of his mostly imaginary fight. Karkat swallowed the war scream that clawed at his throat. His eyes focused exclusively on Sollux’s, using the other as his focal point to back away from the violence still singing in time to his thundering pulse. The emotional backlash tore at him, making it almost painful to stand back up despite knowing the person in front of him was a trusted ally. He grit his teeth and bore it; it was still far too easy to be the violent weapon his kind had been bred and raised for. _Spill blood only for the sake of life, for defense, and be merciful when drawing the wound..._ He forced himself to relax as the mantra repeated.

He looked away before he was truly ready and reached for his shirt. Between the sweat and sopor, putting it on now meant gluing it to his skin for all intents and purposes. It still gave him purpose and distance from the tense standoff he’d just had his friend blunder into. And maybe if he got it on fast enough, he could avoid questions about some of the scars he’d unintentionally put on display.

“How did you get those?”

The query didn’t need to be more specific. He had plenty of scars, but none were more eye-catching. Despite himself, Karkat looked down at the three red starburst scars that stacked up vertically though his torso. He could still see the afterimage of gold tines poking through his skin, taste the blood in the back of his throat, feel the explosion of wind on his face, the memory was so close to the surface of his thoughts. It had taken so long to not simply break down at the mention of them, let alone stop seeing what had caused the damage. Funny that he could remember so much about the particular moment he’d received them, but not when it had stopped freaking him out.

“Culling fork,” Karkat answered, proud that the blunt words remained neutral sounding. He blinked the illusion away, pulling his shirt down to push it further out of his mind. “What do you want?”

It took a second more for Sollux to stop staring and respond. “The code is atrocious.”

Karkat snorted as he pulled the tie from his hair and set to binding it back again. “It came from my younger self. Of course it is.”

“I mean it’s bad, even for you. I’ve gone over it twice already and I still don’t have a clue about half of what I’m looking at.”

“And this precludes you how?”

“It doesn’t, but it’s going to take more work than I thought it would.” His weight shifted uncertainly, like Sollux was second guessing himself. Karkat let him fidget. “We should talk about compensation before I throw the next three night of my life away for this.”

“Compensation,” Karkat repeated, letting the word sit heavy, like he hadn’t already thought about it and come up with a lacking solution. “Making sure you don’t kill yourself by the end of those three nights isn’t enough?”

“You don’t get rewarded for being a pain in the ass, KK. Though the type of pain could be negotiated, I guess.”

A bark of laughter erupted from him before Karkat could control the impulse. “You would be that kind of kinky, wouldn’t you?” Sollux glared at him and he got his chuckling under control. “Seriously, Captor, what do you expect me to give? All I have personally is the clothes I’m wearing and I’m not writing you a promissory note on behalf of past-me. And trust me, you don’t want these clothes.”

“There’s worse things in this world than seeing you naked again,” Sollux said, almost too casually.

Whatever Karkat meant to say next tripped over itself. He frowned, struggling for a second to find words. “As much as I’m sure you’d love to see me in nothing more than my boots, the point remains; I have nothing to give you.”

“You could always work it off. And your boots would look great no matter where we left them.”

“My boots stay on my feet,” Karkat responded flatly, confused and not entirely sure about what. What he did know was that this conversation needed to end before it got any more screwed up. “If you want me to do something specific with your hive, I suggest you write it down. I’ll get to it after I take a shower.” He then made a calculated retreat to the ablution block.

The door clicked shut and he leaned against it, ignoring the fact that he didn’t feel any safer for being alone. What the hell had just happened? He didn’t want to know. He was probably over-thinking it anyway. There had always been a sexualized edge to their teasing because they were stupid that way, but it never went further than that. Always a give and let go comment, then moving one to whatever else was going on. Sollux’s insistence was disorienting. And probably not even real. His head was messed up from memory. The protective desire that being in the past had stirred up was adding significance where there was none. He was projecting his own fucked-up desires on to his friend and he needed to stop thinking about it before he did something truly stupid.

Resisting the desire to knock his head against the door, Karkat sighed and started peeling off his clothes. His skin was still warm enough that his shirt didn’t stick that badly, though it needed a soak to make sure the sopor came out. He started the water in the trap, knob cranked as hot as it could go, then dumped his boots into the water. The only real problem with living in combat boots was that they reeked by the time they came off. Even his socks could stand up by themselves if left for more than a day. They went into the sink with his shirt. After a minute of debate, his pants and underthings joined as well. There was no way any of it would be dry before he was done showering, but putting on wet clothes was preferable to redonning soiled ones. A short, vigorous scrub with something that smelled like soap of some kind later, everything was spread out to dry as best it could and Karkat stepped into the trap himself.

He’d just finished washing out one boot with the same vague detergent-like substance as the rest of his clothes when a knock sounded on the door. It opened before he acknowledged it. The small squawk of surprise as the moist air rushed out belonged to Sollux. For the second time that night, Karkat found himself forcing muscles to relax.

“Holy fuck, KK, you turn into a tropical seadweller or something?”

“Maybe if you used a little more water every once in a while, scalding my skin off wouldn’t be required to be clean.” He considered poking his head out around the curtain to glare at the other. He couldn’t decide how he felt facing his friend with nothing else between them. Instead, he waited until Sollux did his self-conscious shuffle again.

“I brought you extra drying planes,” he said in a rush, obviously trying to justify his lingering presence. “And I found more soap if you need it.” Another fidgeting hesitation. “Anything I can help with?”

Karkat chewed on his lip for a moment. More innuendo, or sincere question? He shook his head to clear the extremely unhelpful image of Sollux wet and soapy in the trap with him. “Can you throw my clothes in the garment sanitizer?”

One beat of silence. Two. Karkat stretched his hearing past the falling water and heard the other’s resigned little sigh. “Yeah, I can do that, but don’t ask for too many more favours. You already own me as it is.” After a bit of rustling to gather said clothes, the door clicked closed again. When further intrusion failed to be forth coming, Karkat turned back to washing his other boot. There was too much to think about, too much emotional entanglement to sort, and the world wouldn’t stop until it went away or was figured out. He might as well deal with what he could control now and hope action brought clarity.

Washing the second boot took twice as long as it should have. Washing himself proved to be just as problematic. He gave up multiple times to stare at the trap curtain, lost in thought, only to force himself forward again when he remembered that just because the hot water was limitless did not mean he could hide in the ablution block all night. The mental chastisement did nothing to hurry him along. When he finally turned the water off, the silence felt oppressive, suffocating in the humid air. Karkat dried himself off on automatic, grateful for the extra drying planes since his hair decided to take up two before it stopped dripping down his back.

He knew he was stalling, but at the same time, Karkat couldn’t convince himself to stop. He had heard Sollux sigh, heard the resignation in words that never said as such. That wasn’t projection, or wishful thinking, or anything other than what it was--another complication on top of so many. That Sollux was angling for something more, something Karkat wasn’t sure he could provide, seemed a good assumption to make. What that something actually was, well. If he wanted to know that, he’d have to ask and risk fucking something up.

And no matter his curiosity, no matter how uncomfortable not knowing made him, that was a risk he could not take.

So that was his answer. He would ignore and pretend and move on. Karkat picked up the used drying planes, jammed his feet into the still wet boots, and vacated the block with a thin veneer of confidence. He hadn’t considered that asking Sollux to wash his clothes meant walking out of the block without anything on. It wouldn’t have been a problem normally, either. The two of them had been in various states of undressed around the other for almost as long as they’d been friends. Now it seemed like an invitation that Karkat didn’t want to extend.

Sollux wasn’t in the hallway or the nutrition block where the garment sanitizer and drying machines had their own enclosed niche. The dryer portion was already going, its display saying there were fifteen more minutes until it was done. He stared at it, trying to figure out why there was time left at all. It didn’t add up in his head. He’d spent more than enough time dragging himself through his washing ritual that his clothes should have been dry already. Unless... He popped the door and grabbed the first thing that came to his hand. A quick sniff confirmed his thoughts. It didn’t smell like sopor, or sweat, or even the soap he’d used in his attempt to wash them enough to be wearable again. They were, however, most definitely clean. He never would have guessed Sollux actually knew how to do a proper load of laundry.

Despite what the timer said, his clothes felt dry, so Karkat pulled them out and redressed. He debated with himself for a minute, then threw his boots in instead. Fifteen minutes wouldn’t dry them completely, but they’d be dry enough he wouldn’t have to worry about blisters and pad rot when he put them back on. He loaded the used drying planes into the sanitizer portion and set it to run before contemplating the nutrition block itself. It had been a while since he’d last flexed his culinary muscles. Considering he didn’t expect to find much beyond instant noodles and precooked, reheatable meals, he could always blame the ingredients if anything turned out awful. Ignoring the itch crawling up his legs from his unprotected feet, Karkat started the food adventure portion of his night.

***


	6. Chapter 6

Consciousness kept trying to creep in, worming into the soft, comfortable, numb place deep sleep had brought him. He pushed it away, aware of the fact he was waking and the desire not to, but nothing beyond that came to light. He faded back and forth, easily at first, then with growing resistance, hovering in the gray mists of disconnected semi-lucidity endlessly until a slight jostle pulled him more firmly into the land of the waking. He fought harder to go back. Something in the waking world hurt and he didn’t want any part of it, just sleep until whatever caused the hurt disappeared as well...

But the jostle changed something fundamental about the world. The dark place he’d been resting in was blocked, inaccessible, as if it had never existed to begin with. Only consciousness remained, whether he wanted to go there or not.

Karkat blinked bleary eyes as he tried to get his think-pan functioning. He didn’t recognize the room he was in, though it was familiar enough he knew not to panic. Shifting in the recuprecoon, trying to find something definite to focus on, he became distracted by how weird the motion felt. Moving in a dense liquid like sopor slime had a certain distinctive wet drag to it, a resistance he didn’t feel at all as he stretched despite the sopor tingle still keeping him groggy and unfocused. He tried to make sense of the conflicting sensations, but it left him feeling even more tired for the effort. Karkat closed his eyes again. Whatever awful thing he’d been afraid of didn’t seem to be out there, which meant he didn’t need to worry anymore either. He relaxed, content in his lethargy. He had just starting to drift back to sleep when he heard a familiar voice cut through the silence.

“Look, I don’t give a damn how important you think it is. He’s not available to speak. If it’s a ship issue, forward it to Zahhak. If it’s a security issue, send it on to Leijon. Send it to Makara for all I care, if it can’t wait. ...No, I don’t know when, maybe three cycles... Yes! Three! ...He’s not a _fucking barkbeast_ you can make heel whenever the mood strikes you. Fuck your agreements; he was _a kid in duress_ when you manipulated him into those. And if you think I’m going to let you--” Sollux hissed, a feral, dangerous sound that snapped Karkat wide awake. He focused instantly on where his friend stood, hands pressed into the desk as he leaned over the terminal there.

“Get off my frequency,” Sollux snarled after a few seconds of tense silence, cutting the air with a quick slice of his hand. A flash of colour played over dark skin like light refracting from water, ending in a line of blue light that followed his fingertips. Karkat blinked in surprise. Then he blinked again, unsure of what he’d seen, or even if he’d seen anything at all. It had happened so fast he couldn’t tell if his eyes had been playing tricks on his dulled senses.

The room descended into stifling quiet. Sollux remained hunched over the terminal for several long seconds before abruptly stalking out of the room all together. Karkat remained stiffly alert for a minute longer, then sunk into the bedding he was still cocooned in. The previous night slammed into him with all the force of a sledgehammer. Sollux a helmsman, himself a puppet of the Followers of the Signless, and from the sounds of it, he’d managed to drag several other friends into his mess as well. How many other suffered because of his stupidity? Karkat didn’t want to know. All he really wanted was to sink into the chrysalis and never come back up. Maybe if he ended his idiocy before he did any real damage... The material thwarted his attempt to bury himself in it, adjusting somehow to keep him buoyant without becoming restrictive. After fighting with it for a few minutes, it gave up and poured him out onto the floor instead.

Losing to a piece of furniture, no mater how technologically advanced, should have salted the wounds of the previous night. The sting was negligible under the weight of disillusionment, however. After losing everything else, even the indignity of being bested by an inanimate object meant little. Instead, Karkat trudged toward the ablution block. There might not have been any slime to rinse off, but the habit pushed him into action. Or at least enough action that he ended up under a hot spray before zoning out again. He didn’t even realize he’d curled up in a corner until Sollux found him there.

With gentle insistence, the older troll pulled him from the ablution chamber, getting drenched himself in the process. Habit kicked in again so that Karkat managed to dry himself off while Sollux did the same, then there was more gentle herding back into the main block once dressed. The sleeping chrysalis had been put away and another compartment opened up into a sitting platform. A suspicious looking pile had already formed there, but Karkat made no argument about being bundled into it. He took the proffered food, though it neither looked nor smelled appetizing. Here, Sollux showed some impatience with Karkat’s withdrawn nature even if he still didn’t push. Once finished picking at the unidentifiable meal, his friend tried to give him as much space as the small block could allow. Most of the time Sollux spent clicking away at the terminal in the room, still apparently prone to muttering to himself as he worked. A couple times he stood and circuited the room, spending time going over the bookshelf or sickle display with acute attention. Twice, he left; once to answer some call, the second referred to as some type of maintenance.

All the while, Karkat thought, turning over the ruined pieces of his new reality with despondent care. That his future self had fallen into the FSC’s grasp, while disheartening and painful, actually held little surprise. They’d only been trying to do as such since he’d first touched the internet. Granted, some of their information had proven useful, like how to hide his bloodcolour efficiently and the rules that supported hemoanynomity. The vast majority of the time, however, they’d just been demanding and terrifying under the guise of benevolence. Before contact with the FSC, he’d understood he was different. No one had a lusus like his, no one was as warm as he was, and his horns were all sorts of wrong. It didn’t take long to figure out that all those differences meant something. After being contacted, however, he feared the differences. The visions they painted of his culling still had the power to keep him awake during the daylight hours. Everything that defined him, from his sign to the uniform bluntness of his teeth, became a weapon that could be used against him at any point.

They poked and wheedled and cajoled, tried every manipulation in the book to get him to come into the “safety” they could proved, until the paranoia alone nearly suffocated him. But the pressure backfired, igniting his stubborn nature and warrior breeding rather than making him crumble to their will. He may have come to hate himself for everything that was wrong with him, but he hated the FSC more for making him afraid of it. Anger became a safety net, an anchor, a blade he could ravage others with even as they sought to ravage him. It didn’t matter that his weapon was dual-edged--that was part of the price of safety, or at least the illusion of it.

He had finally earned a reprieve from the Coalition’s attention thanks to the venomous rage he could spit. The last contact they’d made had been about a sweep ago, when they had provided him with a connection code that would allow him to contact them “when he was ready.” He snarled obscenities at the thought, but that code was still tucked away into the depths of one of his books, conveniently forgotten about more often than not nowadays. He told himself it was to protect against the universe’s awful sense of humor; that if he blew it off, his own bad luck would cause them to start their harassment in earnest again. If he was honest with himself (which he had to be now, knowing what he knew), he’d kept it as a last ditch effort to avoid culling.

He must have said something aloud, because then Sollux responded with, “You did it to save lives.”

Karkat blinked at his friend, who had given up his pretense of being otherwise involved and was now partially in the pile as well. “What?”

The other didn’t look up from the data reader he was playing with. “Your decision to join the Coalition. You did it to save the lives of others,” Sollux repeated.

He snorted in derision. It sounded like an overflowing bowl of shit to Karkat, a throwaway comment to make him feel better about a hopeless circumstance. But it piqued his curiosity enough that he didn’t immediately shoot the idea down. “Who?” Karkat demanded instead, sure that the list wouldn’t be impressive.

After a moment of hesitation, Sollux sighed and put the reader aside. “Most of us, actually. TV, KN, TZ, FF...” He frowned and fidgeted. “Me,” he added quietly before hurrying on. “NP’s been involved with them for I don’t know how long and EQ followed her, so I guess they don’t count. But GZ’s conversion alone has probably saved hundred of lives beyond that, and that’s just trolls. Almost every group that forms the Coalition owes lives to you.”

Karkat frowned. It had never occurred to him that he might be able to do something to help others from within the organization. He’d figured being a puppet would be the best he could hope for, a mouthpiece for whatever garbage they wanted to spill into the universe. “But I’m still their barkbeast to call.”

Sollux winced. “You heard that?” When Karkat didn’t respond, Sollux continued. “Some think that, yeah. Setvan is a pretty self-entitled asshole anyway, but because they’re the scholar, they feel even more entitled to try and jerk you around. Spent too much time with their ideal and not with reality. And I know some of the others in the Leadership would rather have a figurehead to boss around, but that’s not what they wanted. They wanted the descendant of a revolutionary, which is exactly what they got, so they can suck it.” He stretched and shifted to face Karkat better. “Trust me, KK. For every awful restriction the Coalition has tried to bind you with, you’ve stuck it to them four times over. For every single asshat who tries to misuse you to control others, sixteen more value your leadership on its own merits. There’s still a shit ton of bureaucratic idiocy to wade through, but things are better. For a lot of people. Because of you.”

When no more questions were forthcoming, Sollux went back to his reader, leaving Karkat to mull over his fate in silence once more. Though he still didn’t quite buy the line of joining to save lives, the need to believe it had him accepting it all the same. The thought of service in the FSC, or really the idea of people following him (willingly or not) for the Coalitions ambition still made him feel ill, but that such service might bring about some good eased a bit of the distaste. What soothed him the most, however, was the idea he wasn’t being kept as a pet, a bauble to be put on display when it was convenient, then tucked away in obscurity the rest of the time. He’d still been trapped--a gilded cage was still a cage, no matter how large or nice it happened to be. Except it didn’t act like a cage, didn’t respond to challenges like a cage, stiff and immutable. If anything, it seemed like an actual contract of service, such as he would have signed to join the Threshecutioner Corps. He’d never thought there could be an equality in working with the FSC before and it shifted the view of his scattered and maimed future.

Starting to feel overwhelmed by the shift in perspective, Karkat’s attention readily turned to a distraction. Sollux had made himself quite at home in the pile he noted, even if his attention was once more fixed up on the hand-held reader. He didn’t initiate more conversation. The silence between them was comfortable, unstained by emotional upheaval despite the constant shifts in Karkat’s thoughts. Sollux also didn’t act as though he was waiting for someone to force the words out of his mouth he was too stubborn to say alone. He was simply there, a comforting presence in a still alien environment. He seemed relaxed, content even, to stay where he was, as though proximity alone was a good enough reason to remain. In another place and time, the setup would have been scandalous, unquadranted and relaxing in a pile together...

...Unless they _were_ quadranted. Karkat’s bloodpusher stuttered at the thought. He’d had feelings for Sollux for longer than he cared to contemplate. The yellowblood had been one of the first trolls that hadn’t been put off by the vitriol of self-hate. Had, in fact, met each attempt to drive him off with either sarcastic indifference or equally hot anger. It had been such hidden relief from the saccharine-sickening responses of the FSC that Karkat hadn’t realized how much he liked talking to someone until he finally said something that did make Sollux go away. The opposite edge of anger turned out to be loneliness and that hurt more than Karkat could have guessed.

In the fumbling sweeps since, other emotions had gotten tangled up in the clusterfuck that was their relationship, mashed into combinations that were uncomfortable and socially dangerous. He wanted to push. He wanted to protect. He wanted to pull Sollux away from the edge he constantly toed. He just _wanted_. I there had been any sort of normal vacillation between each desire, he might have mentioned it at some point. But it happened too fast, too frequently to be considered healthy. Quadrants were meant to provide stability, something he could never hope to provide given how his feelings kept blurring rather than defining those lines. Never mind the fact that being in any quadrant period was bad for retaining his anonymity. The FSC had been sure to give him that daymare as well--betrayal by a loved one.

But there was no need to protect his bloodcolour here, was there? If the FSC already had their grabby hands on him, maybe the fear they had drilled into him had gone away, leaving room for all those complicated feelings to untangle. And if that happened, maybe they could fall into a quadrant together... Karkat mentally slapped himself. All he really had was a fuck load of supposition based on one flimsy, nondescript action.

Now that the idea had taken root, however, it refused to be dislodged. Karkat stared at Sollux, still absorbed in whatever he was reading, a slow burning desire to do something consuming him. He could--heat flooded his face, hot enough to burn even the tips of ears. Well, no, he couldn’t pap Sollux. That was wildly inappropriate at the moment even if his friend and his future-self shared diamonds. You don’t just pap others out of the blue like that. But maybe...maybe he could touch...? They’d touched before. Sollux had held him twice, three times if both breakdowns on the bridge were counted separately. Certainly a touch wouldn't be awkward or confusing.

He hesitated, though, face too warm and hand suspended in the air as Karkat tried to convince himself a touch didn’t mean anything, or more appropriately wouldn’t be rejected. At length, he pulled his hand back into his lap without doing anything. He was being ten types of stupid and he knew it, making a huge deal out of nothing. Traitorous hands curled into fists, Karkat focused his eyes into his lap, making himself concentrate on ridding his skin of the colour it had taken. For once, he was glad for Sollux’s oblivious nature. This mess didn’t need more complications.

That assertion didn't ease the feeling of disappointment when Sollux stood and left the room again. Karkat didn’t have much time to sulk or berate himself or Sollux before the older troll returned with another round of food. This time there was no subterfuge--Sollux sat right next to Karkat in the pile, handing over the meal of strange green pods with a cursory explanation of how to eat them. It was like popping grub candies from a shell, only smaller in scale, and they tasted very different. Not bad; just different, and Karkat found himself too hungry to complain.

At least until Sollux “accidentally” popped two of the mostly round innards into Karkat’s face. He apologized through his snickering until Karkat nailed him in the forehead in return. Then it was all out war. It wasn’t until much later, ammo spent and resulting mess cleaned, that Karkat realized how easily they had both flopped back into the pile, close enough to touch. Not exactly cuddled together, but the solid press of one shoulder into another. If he craned his neck a bit, Karkat found he could see the reader screen. That felt invasive of the closeness they already shared, so he snuggled down instead, drowsily enjoying the warmth slowly eating away at the dead spot in his chest instead.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Check out this lovely piece of art from SybLaTortue!](http://syblatortue.tumblr.com/post/133147144036/you-can-do-it-kk-you-can-pap-the-hot-nerd)


	7. Chapter 7

Karkat looked over his hard work and wondered again if it was enough. The two previous times he’d asked himself that, the answer had been no. Psions burned through calories like fire burned through fake milk creamer. More if they were being active. When Sollux remembered to ingest something with more nutritional weight than a twelve pack of energy grubs, he could clear a nutrient block of all edibles in less than an hour. And since Karkat very much doubted even the energy grubs had been consumed at this point, there needed to be enough to make sure Sollux could replace at least some of what he’d lost to mania. Then there was his own metabolism to worry about...

...He was stalling more than anything and he knew it. The eating platform was covered in food, so much so that even if he had the ingredients to make more, there wouldn’t be room for it. And he didn’t have anything left to cook. He’d gone through everything salvageable in the block itself as well as the entry block, which had added an extra task and an hour to his timetable. If he screwed around any longer, neither of them would eat until sunrise, which was unacceptable. So Karkat tightened the bindings on his boots, took a breath against the flutter of adrenaline, and stalked down the hallway to collect his wayward friend.

It seemed Sollux had taken his previous scare seriously. No sooner had Karkat started to open the door than he yanked it closed again to deflect the barrage of projectiles launched at his head. He braced, holding it shut against the force trying to pry it from his grasp. He got lucky; his grip gave out just as the thudding stopped. The door snapped open and Karkat hit the floor on instinct alone as several more objects came flying at him with haphazard accuracy. He watched the empty energy grubs finish bouncing down the hallway as he picked himself back up, amused rather than annoyed by the attempted counterstrike.

“The throwing stars would have worked better,” he said conversationally as he stepped over the pile that had formed by the door.

“As fun as punching holes in you would be, it would only make you more annoying.”

The younger troll sat on the floor, surrounded by pieces of dismantled husktop, fidgeting with something inside the case Karkat couldn’t see. With a sharp tug and an audible pop, Sollux withdrew one of the processor plates. He twirled it in his hands, looking it over before setting it aside with the other pieces. Then he reached in to remove something else. “Are you hovering just to piss me off, or do you actually want something?”

Apparently they were back to being surly with each other. Karkat relaxed a bit; he liked surly. He could handle surly. “I want a lot of things, but I’ll settle for an explanation. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Wondering if the reason the code crashed is because your shitty husktop couldn’t compile it correctly.” Another plate popped out. Sollux scanned it, then set it aside. “If that’s true, then all I have to do is boost the problem area, let the mess compile, and run a standard debug rather than trying to pick through line by line. I was starting to go cross-eyed trying to read through it.” He frowned as he pulled the last plate out, inspecting it slowly.

Karkat bit his tongue. The husktop's ability to perform had never been the problem. The program had compiled just fine, after all; it just hadn't reacted the way it was supposed to, because nothing in Karkat's life ever did. However, telling Sollux that would be an exercise in futility. Unless he built it himself, and usually not even then, the base assumption was that the machine was shit and needed to be upgraded. It would take less time for Sollux to discover that it wasn't the husktop that was the problem on his own than try to argue about it and have him dismantle the damn thing anyway just to prove a point.

And speaking of points, there was a more important one waiting to be made. One worth the argument it was going to create. "Since you’re at a stopping point, come eat something,” Karkat prompted.

Sollux didn't even look up. His only reaction was to frown harder at the processor plate still in his hands. “Just bring it here.”

“Where you can set it aside and forget about it until it gains sentience?" Karkat settled on his heels. "No. Come eat in the nutrition block like a normal troll.”

“I’m busy--”

“With nothing that’s going anywhere.”

“You were the one who told me to do it!”

“I also told you I wasn’t going to let you kill yourself in the meantime. There’s still plenty of time to figure this shit out without starving yourself trying to get it done faster.”

“Easy for you to say. I’m the one doing all the work!”

“All the more reason to put it aside for ten minutes to stuff your face gash with something more than sugar and caffeine. This isn’t an opt-in venture, Captor, “ Karkat snarled when Sollux went to argue again. “Eating and sleeping are not miscellaneous tasks you can put off until you have time for them. If you had the option, you'd never do either. So I’m not giving you the option. You will eat. Now, you can walk in there and eat of your own volition or get dragged there and be force-fed. Pick one."

Sollux glared, teeth bared in open, but silent, defiance. Karkat fought the urge to return the challenge. He'd already delivered his ultimatum; there was no need for further escalation or coercion. He just needed be a polite brick wall until the other saw sense.

The drone of the apiary frames filled the space between them for several long seconds. “Your choices suck, KK,” Sollux finally relented.

Karkat took a breath and forced the muscles he'd been unconsciously tensing to relax. “Only because you refuse to see the value in either.”

Even without any discernible eye structure, he could tell when Sollux rolled them in exasperation. With a sigh of dramatic suffering, the younger troll stood, using his psionics to buoy himself up and over the ring of husktop parts before he was even fully upright. For the most part, it looked effortless. But Karkat had seen effortless control before and knew better. Too much upward lift, too little forward thrust, a tiny stumble as Sollux disengaged a second too late. Minor things that proved the other troll was still trying to show off no matter how put upon he sounded. Karkat kept any and all comments to himself as he followed the other back to the nutrition block, unwilling to spoil the cooperation by gloating. Sollux still got the final word in by making one of the empty energy grubs ricocheted off the back of Karkat’s head not even four steps down the hall. Karkat then collected the remaining failed projectiles to the familiar, if not still mildly irritating, sound of dry snickering.

“Did I know I had this much food in my hive?” Sollux asked, staring at the spread before him rather than sitting down.

“You had twice this much, but the rest had to feed the incinerators before it started campaigning for equal rights. You should have been charging it rent.” Karkat tossed his armload of garbage into the appropriate bin. Then he gently steered his still gaping friend into a seat. “You’ll need to order more foodstuffs some time tonight,” he added, taking his own seat opposite Sollux.

That earned him an incredulous look. “Why? So you can cook it all again in one go? Or so that I can start a housing racket for pocket change?” Karkat simply grinned back, refusing to comment further.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence as Sollux picked over the offerings, trying small bits of multiple things before putting any of it on his food plateau. Even then, it wasn’t much, smeared around to look like more was there than there really was. Karkat kept his attention on his own plateau and the controlled portions he was putting there. Once he stopped being contrary about it, or rather once he realized exactly how hungry he was, Sollux would eat with more enthusiasm and greater vigor. All Karkat had to do was keep quiet long enough to let the other get that far alone. So he forced his focus onto the food in front of him instead of giving into the urge to nag the other along.

That was harder to accomplish than Karkat expected. He purposefully didn’t give much consideration to what he ate anymore. Being a troll meant he was still a carnivore, no matter how blunt his teeth might appear. However, much of the foodstuffs cultivated by the Coalition came from planets and cultures that had very flexible ideas about what that word meant and how to provide it. They put into safe ports often enough that a large supply of food was both unnecessary and impractical to carry around, but that also meant they had to work with whatever that port was donating to the cause. His ship had its own hydroponics bay that supplemented those rations so at least some food items remained consistently recognizable from meal to meal. It was safer, though, to ingested what he was provided without thought because he could only afford to skip so many meals before hunger won out anyway.

Despite the black hole rumbling in his gut and the recently acquired habit of inhaling nutritional objects, Karkat tried to take his time eating. Switching from a pseudo-protein to a hard-protein diet, even for three nights, probably meant unhappy things for his digestive track. And sure enough, he’d only cleared half his food plateau before hunger and nausea began to intermix. He continued to eat with methodical fastidiousness for a while longer because he needed to eat as much as Sollux did, until one more bite meant certain illness. He carefully set the rest of his meal aside and focused on the troll across from him while he waited for system to settle.

Sollux had already moved past the point of portion control and was simply devouring what he wished from the serving vessels themselves. Karkat watched his friend eat, both relieved and unsettled at the sheer voracity being displayed. Future Sollux could still put away four times his own body weight in food, but he no longer ate with a sense of desperation like the Sollux in front of him. And while it could be argued that was because future Sollux ate more regularly, Karkat knew that to be only part of the reason. The rest laid in the bowels of his ship, in the converter engines that drained and stored enough psionic power that his friend was no longer an overflowing font of it. He still hated the fact those engines were on his ship at all, but he could no longer deny how beneficial their existence had become to Sollux. Not with the contrary evidence literally right in front of him.

Those not-pale-not-flushed feelings surged back to the forefront, adding a shot of guilt to the already greasy nausea turning in Karkat's stomach. He needed to stop thinking again. Good thing he had a bunch of work waiting in the nutrition block to start. Sollux gave him a curious look when he stood up, but Karkat waved it off. He returned his uneaten food to their respective vessels before heading to the cooking section of the block to start cleaning. Between the effort it would take to keep his meal down and the focus required to work effectively, there would be no room for the inane wanderings of his thinkpan. It was slow going at first, but by the time Sollux came in, surrounded by a cloud of mostly cleaned out serving vessels, Karkat was just starting to run out of things to clean.

“You’re going to do this to my whole hive, aren’t you?” Sollux asked, resigned and a bit irritated.

Karkat shrugged and didn't look up from the counter he was wiping down for the third time. There was no way he was going to admit he’d already wiped down the cabinets and thermal hull as well. “You didn’t leave me a list.”

“Is this all we are in the future?” Sollux demanded as the empty dishes dropped with an impatient clatter.

Karkat jerked to attention, instantly on alert for a threat even as he reminded himself again that there was no threat. Granted, a pissed off psion of any age could prove fatally dangerous to be around, and Sollux was no exception, but a flare of temper also wasn't a battle cry. It took a minute to rein in the fight instinct and then another minute to try and process the question. The words refused to make sense, however. “What?”

“Usually when you bully me into something for my own good, then shut me out, it’s because I pissed you off," Sollux huffed. "And yeah, I’ve probably done sixteen things tonight alone to irritate this timeline’s KK, but you... Half the time you react like he would and then the other half you don't. And all I can figure out is that either I did something stupid in the future you haven’t forgiven me for yet, in which case I’m preemptively sorry for it _now_ , or you're trying to make up for something else. Because if it’s the latter, you can stop with all this.” He gestured around the block. “I don’t want some false gratuity you feel like you owe me and I certainly as fuck don’t need the reminder that I’ll end up as a glorified--”

“ _Don't say it,_ ” Karkat growled, hands clenching as anger rolled through him, still as bright and hot as the last time they'd had this argument, sweeps in the future. It might have been better to let Sollux assume, timeline continuity and all that shit, but the consequences be damned in this case. He wasn’t going to let that idea fester. “You’re not some..." Karkat choked on a snarl; he almost couldn't get the words out without wanting to scream. "Some... _piece of wetware_...strung up in the bowels of a warship. You chose how you want to serve, how you want to live, all on your goddamn own. Didn't matter how much of a pain in the globes it was to everyone else, you just fucking did it anyway like the blistered shit sponge you are. And while shit certainly sucked during a lot of the in between phases, if I thought for a even a _moment_ you were being _forced in any way_ to do what you do, I would tear the whole insipid taintchaffing clusterfuck apart with my own hands!”

Sollux stared at him long enough that Karkat began to wonder if anything he'd said had been understandable words or just a lot of aggravated screeching on his end. Then, so quietly Karkat had to strain to hear it, Sollux asked, “So why do you keep shutting me out?”

Karkat drew in a sharp breath. Well, he’d already gone this far. Might as well finish ruining his past self's upcoming life. “I have a moirail.”

The admission was met with dead silence.

“No offense, KK, but what does that have to with this conversation? Last time I checked, nothing like this counted as a moirallegenic overture. We agreed that you bitching at me to eat and sleep isn't pale, just like how me telling you it's okay when someone in one of your dumb books or movies is a jerk isn't pale." Sollux paused before adding under his breath, "And I can think of a lot of other things I’d rather do with you than get shooshed, to be honest.”

Now it was Karkat's turn to stare, dumbfounded. “But I... But you--” Even as he said the words, he realized his mistake. Six sweeps ago, on the other side of this time-fuck, he’d been confronted with an end he hadn’t been ready for. The Sollux then had offered protection, glimpses of understanding, assurance when it was needed most. Everything Karkat had used to define himself had been ripped away, so of course he’d needed stability, and anchor to keep the pieces together until he could rebuild himself. But for all the pale intentions behind the actions, they were still not the acts of a moirail. Had never been the acts of a moirail. His own desperation had made him see something that had never been there. Or rather, made him see only a part of what was there.

His knees suddenly felt weak, light headed from the sudden revelation. Karkat clamped his hands to the counter top in an effort to remain standing. For all the shame-filled times he’d compared Gamzee to Sollux, he should have figured it out sooner. For all the preaching and encounters and deprogramming that came with the concept of love beyond quadrants, he should have figured it out sooner...

“KK...?”

Karkat looked at his friend and didn’t know whether to laugh, to curse, or to cry. “Answer me truthfully; what do you feel for me?” Sollux physically balked, stiffening and trying to back away from the conversation now that it had taken such a bizarre turn. “If you want an answer to your question, answer mine,” Karkat insisted. “What do you feel?”

After much self-conscious shifting, Sollux finally let out an explosive sigh towards the ceiling that sounded a lot like “I like you.” There was a painful silence of maybe two seconds before more words started slowly falling. “I’ve kinda always had a thing for you. I’m just such an incorrigible fuck-up that I can’t settle on one quadrant. I like you fired up and frothing as much as I like you quiet and content. I want to push you and protect you and fuck with you and get fucked by you and I can’t tell  you any of this because I can’t pick one and stay with it. I can’t give you the almighty quadrant you deserve. And even if I could, I’d just fuck it up anyway, so what’s the point of even telling you?”

Sollux had wrapped his thin arms around himself, like that would protect him from a shattering blow yet to come. Feeling too much already, Karkat didn’t deny the impulse that left him lunging across the block. There was a squeak of surprised protest as he wrapped the other in a tight hug.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. Sollux stiffened even more, but that only made Karkat hold tighter. “I’m sorry I’m such a fucking moron.”

Sollux relaxed slightly, returning the hug awkwardly after a moment. “Not that you’ll hear me disagreeing, but why are _you_ the moron here?”

“Because I had it so stuck in my pan that things were supposed to be one way that I couldn’t see anything. And I made us both miserable because of it.” Karkat forced himself to step back, looking his friend over one more time because he didn't want to screw this up again.

Sollux stared at him with wide eyes.“So...the moirail thing...”

“It’s been killing me for sweeps," Karkat admitted. The constant weight of guilt finally eased from his chest, leaving a feeling of exhaustion and elation and disorientation behind. "I thought that was supposed to be us, but I found it in another and I could never figure out why and I thought...” He took a breath, trying to stem the flood of emotion still trying to come out. "I didn't think. That was the problem."

"So we're not pale in the future. Good to know." Sollux stared at their feet for a long moment. Then, with a little too much forced nonchalance, he asked, "What are we then?"

“Whatever the fuck we want to be," Karkat said with a completely delirious grin. "Darkest shade of pale to the blackest of flushes and everything in between.”

If possible, Sollux's eyes went wider than before. “Okay, who the fuck are you and what did you do with the real KK?”

He couldn't help it. Karkat laughed, heedless of the tears that also streaked down his cheeks as he grabbed his friend and swung him up and through the air, reciting the apologue of the First Ship with more enthusiasm than he’d ever had previous.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Want more writing/music/bad fangirl antics? I've got a semi-NSFW [tumblr](http://grimreaperchibi.tumblr.com) where all the weirdness gets dumped.
> 
> ***PLEASE NOTE: **Yes** , I am still working on this story. **Yes** , I will be finishing it at some point. However, updates will be slow because of various other obligations in my life right now. Please be patient instead of messaging me on tumblr about this matter; I'm always willing to field questions and discuss [backstory](http://grimreaperchibi.tumblr.com/tagged/big-crab-side-quests), but I'm dealing with a lot of anxiety right now and the continuation questions are not helping. Thank you.


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